Web Traffic Tips: Guest Posting

photo credit: Körschgen

Today’s tip may seem intimidating, but it’s one of the VERY best ways to drive traffic to your site. That’s right, I’m talking about turning yourself into a rock star with guest posting!

What is guest posting?

Guest posting is writing an article that gets posted on someone else’s blog.

Why would I want to give someone else my content?

There are a lot of reasons. Here’s a few.

1. You get yourself in front of that person’s ENTIRE readership.  Let’s look at a theoretical example.

If someone asked me to guest post on this blog and I decided they were a good match for you, my reader, and my content would you trust what they had to say?

If they wrote a post that was intersting and helpful do you think you might click through to check out their blog? I sure would ~ and I’ve been noticing just how much of that I’ve been doing lately. There has been some killer guest posts on the net lately.

2. You get to position yourself as an “expert” on a topic.

If a blogger is willing to let you come in and talk about something you bet it makes you look like you know what you’re talking about. Remember our working definition of expert (before the “Yeah, buts” set in) an expert is someone who knows more than most other people on a topic. If you’ve done the research for a niche site you know more than most on the topic I assure you!

3. You build a great relationship with another blogger

Creating relationships with other bloggers in your niche or related niches is one of the best things you can do for your business. It gives you a place to start for JV partners and possibly someone to help you out when you need it. What’s more your guest posting relationship could turn into a friendship and friends are a bonus in this industry!

4. You get a quality backlink back to your site!

It sounds hard ~ why don’t I just write articles and submit them?

Good question. While article marketing is a good thing ~ don’t get me wrong, the chances of your article getting picked up by an influential marketer in your niche (especially if you’re out of the IM niche) is pretty small. A lot of bloggers (outside of IM) don’t even KNOW about EZA.

When you blog directly on their site you skip the middle man and go right to the audience. You also get to interact personally with the blog owner, creating a relationship that you can build on in the future.

How do I find blogs to guest post on?

Here’s some possible ways to find blogs related to your topic.

1. Google ~ Google your topic and check for related blogs, or use the google blog search and see what you find.

2. Your RSS reader ~ if you’ve got niche related blogs you read regularly just contact the people you already know. You’ve probably already been commenting on their blogs so your name will already be familiar. It will be easier to get a guest posting gig from someone who is at least familiar with your name.

3. Blog directories ~ technorati, blogcatalog or mybloglog. These are great places to look for related blogs.

What do I look for in a blog?

You want to be choosy when picking blogs to guest post on. Your reputation is on the line. Make sure the blog is somewhere you want your name.

1. Check the blog for good content and information.

2. Check the blog for active comment sections ~ if no one is around guest posting there doesn’t do you much good.

3. Check if the person is building a list ~ if they are chances are they do some sort of announcement for new posts. (you could even ask for them to announce your post)

How do I go about asking to do a guest post?

Just ask.

Find the contact information on the blog ~ if there is none ~ then you know it’s not a good blog for you to guest post on. Once you’ve found a way to get in touch with the blog owner just send them a brief email asking if they’d be willing to let you do a guest post on their blog.

Here’s some things to keep in mind.

1. You want to make this as easy as possible for the blog owner.

2. Let them know a couple topics you could write about ~ and add in if they have something specific they’d like written you’d be willing to do that as well (as long as it’s within your knowledge area).

3. Ask them who/what type of readership they have. Women? Men? Old? Rich? Poor? Beginners in the topic? Experts?  Knowing this information will help you write a post that will resonate with the readers ~ which will make it easier for them to click through to your site.

4. Find out how they want you to send the article? Word? Text? Give you author access to their wp blog and you just put it in yourself? You don’t want the blog owner to have to do a lot of editing or formatting to insert your post. Remember, keep it easy for them!

5. What length of post they want. This is especially important if you’re long winded like me. Some bloggers don’t want their posts to go past 1000 words.

6. Find out how many links they accept in your post. They may tell you 2 in the sig file is fine, but they may also say you can put one in the body of the article ~ this is important to know before you write the article.

Where do I send my links?

One purpose of guest posting is to get a link pointing back to your site. You will most likely get 2 links,just like at an article directory.

If you are building a list and have a squeeze page set up I suggest you use one of your links to send them there. If you only have your list signup on your blog then send them to the homepage of your blog. If you’ve talked about something related to a specific post I would link them directly to that post as well. So one link would go to your homepage (using your whole site targeted keyword) and then one would go to a specific post (using the targeted keywords for that post as the anchor text).

Action Steps:

1. Find 5 to 10 blogs that you’d like to guest post on.

2. Send an email to each of the blog owners

3. Get some details from the blog owner about what they want for the post.

4. Write the post

5. Send it to the blog owner.

6. If you have twitter/facebook/list/blog readers make sure you announce and promote your post when it goes live to drive as much traffic as you can to the guest post.

Those are the basic steps for guest posting. I have a guest posting goal for this year, that I’m slacking on this month. Last month I did 2 guest posts and it went really well. You can check them out here if you like:

Marketing on Squidoo at Lynn Terry’s Clicknewz

Growing your copywriting business with Squidoo at Marketing Words Copywriting Blog

Here’s my first ever guest post ~ it is a little different than a regular guest post. If you’ve got a blogging success story I suggest you try this one!

How I pulled my blog out of the grave ~ at MaxBlogger Stories

There’s definitely a bit of a learning curve with Guest posting ~ but for me it was mostly a mental thing. Feeling like you’re “good enough” to post on someone else’s blog. Believe me, you are! You can do it.

Here’s a couple of the resources I’m using to learn more about guest posting.

Guest Posting Workbook By Chris Garrett

This is a pretty basic ebook that outlines the process of guest posting. It’s clear and gives quite a few helpful suggestions and plenty of helpful information to get started guest posting for your blog.

If you are a beginner I would suggest this one from the two. It is easy to understand and covers plain old guest posting.

Blogging World Tour by Nicole Dean

Nicole Dean is a rock star! Last summer she took her blog on a world tour. She guest posted for a week on a few different blogs. She turned that experience into this ebook. It is very well written. Lots of specifics to do and not do. She gives you a bunch of worksheets to keep everything organized ~ which is important if you’re doing a big tour like this.

This ebook will work for simple guest posting, but is really geared to a full out tour. It also uses a very cool spin on guest posting that requires you have your own product. This is definitely more than your basic guest posting guide.

Both of these products are great ~ although they are completely different. They are quite affordable ~ both are under $20.

Guest posting is one of the best ways to drive more, new, completely targeted traffic to your site. It takes a little courage to do the first one, but it is worth it!!

So are you going to do it? Are you going to take action and do some guest posts? I will tell you each time I’ve done a guest post I’ve had a good size increase not only in traffic but in subscriptions to my list. I can’t wait to hear about your experiences with guest posting. When you get your first guest post make sure you come over and tell us all about it!!